Earlier this week, as Geri recovered from a hip replacement operation, walker at hand, she told me the story of her journey with perfume. We sat in her dining room. A vase held tight white roses with frilly pink edges that opened to blooms as big as a baby’s head. Behind us was a grand piano and a harpsichord. (Geri is an organist with gigs at churches and funeral parlors throughout town, and she occasionally hosts baroque musical ensembles at her house.)

She told me that the first fragrance she knew well was her mother’s Yardley Lavender. “It was the only perfume my dad liked,” she said. Her father didn’t wear fragrance, although he shaved with a mug of soap, and every once in a while he’d clean the family’s eyeglasses with his shaving brush…

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